Slashdot videos: Now with more Slashdot!

View

Discuss

Share

We've improved Slashdot's video section; now you can view our video interviews, product close-ups and site visits with all the usual Slashdot options to comment, share, etc. No more walled garden! It's a work in progress -- we hope you'll check it out (Learn more about the recent updates).

cathector sends along a story from SpaceWeather.com on the discovery of water ice on Mars.
"Scientists have figured out the mysterious white substance unearthed by NASA's Phoenix lander on Mars. It's frozen water. The breakthrough came last week when Phoenix's stereo camera caught the substance in the act of disappearing. Bathed in martian sunlight for four days, the white substance sublimated — i.e., it transformed from solid to gas without passing through the liquid state. This is how water behaves on Mars.... Some readers have asked, how do we know the white substance is not frozen CO2 (dry ice) instead of frozen water? Answer: Phoenix's landing site is too warm for dry ice. The average daily temperature is about -70 F while dry ice requires temperatures lower than about -109 F." The animated GIF showing the ice sublimating is pretty nice too.

In other news, NASA announced today that a manned mission to Mars is planned to retreive the newly found ice in time for the 2012 Kentucky Derby. NASA plans to upstage Woodford Reserve's famous $1000 Mint Julep at the race with its own $3,000,000 version of the traditional cocktail. While plans are still being firmed up, the beverage will reportedly come in a limited edition collector's glass.

We could always just ship the abundance of water we have to Mars. Oh, wait, that's 10 years from now when politicians can't deny global warming any longer and they'll need some other boneheaded assumption to go on like water not being all that heavy to launch into space. The shit practically lifts itself!

Pretty much anything can sublimate under the proper conditions. But when you say "a white solid that sublimates at -70 degrees F and martian surface pressure and is found in macroscopic quantities naturally" you narrow down the field quite a bit. In this case, to exactly one reasonable possibility.

Perhaps next mission they should take along some sugar. Put it out and see if it 'sublimates' as well.

Memo to all Enforcers:By order of the Council of Elders, anyone caught consuming the sweet, sweet bait near the robotic invader from the blue planet is to have his gelsacs summarily pierced.Signed,K'Breel

A similar experiment was recently conducted to determine the existence of life in Congress. A large pile of money was left sitting out which sublimated while votes accreted; thereby proving the existence of life in Congress. It is still up for debate how long before intelligent life is found in Congress.

Actually I was just being snarky. I guess because I've been hanging around on Pharyngula and FSTDT a lot lately, dealing with the "evolution is just a theory!" and "particle physics proves astrology!" wackos.

You say you think it's sublimationWell you knowthat'd be out of this worldWhat else could explain the diminutionWell you knowthat'd be out of this worldBut when you talk about reductionDon't you know ice ain't the only thingDon't you know other substances are white [x3]

You say you got an aqueous solutionWell you knowWe'd all want to see the proofMartians might be liliputianWell you knowLook for them if you can canBut if you want money for space probes that craterAll I can tell you is brother maybe laterLearn how to use metrics first, alright? [x4]

we should wisely remember that all these claims of ice or dry ice and so many other speculations are based on our earthly experience and so are limited to our sense perception. the fact is that every planet, all those millions that you can and cannot see in the sky are fully habitable and many many people are living there. this is the knowledge coming from the topmost intelligent people who have ever appeared on this planet and given fully scientific information about other planets. spending billions on exploring other planets is waste of money when such knowledge already exists. For more details read "easy journey to other planetes" by His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. Hare Krishna.

Could we have this important information in units used by, I don't know, the rest of the world?

Hah! With this announcement, NASA has predicated that Fahrenheit is now used on the surface of two worlds, thus re-establishing its dominance over that other temperature unit which is only used in part of one world. We will wrest control of this universe back from you metric heathens, even if we have to do it one planet at a time!

After looking at that fascinating GIF from the summary, I'm not sure it is water. It just kind of disappears. It's probably some sort of highly advanced life form that can change its shape at will and lives beneath the planet's surface most of the time. It then just came up for a little Martian sunshine and, upon noticing our probe went back to tell its buddies that the Earthlings sent more crap to their planet and that they should expect an invasion soon. Unless they can prove to us they don't have any oil.